A forest a day! July 21: RU043H, West Wellington

A significant area of forest that was left out of the Conservation Agreement, and which failed to receive promised protection as part of the Intergovernmental Agreement, was logged in the West Wellington region. West Wellington is a sub-alpine region of native forests that adjoins the Mt Wellington reserve in southern Tasmania.

West Wellington is a very significant are of largely intact tall eucalyptus forest (Hitchcock, 2012: 104). The tall eucalypts occupy high elevations in some parts of the West Wellington region.

The eastern-most larger block of around 5,000 ha of diverse forest, including extensive regrowth tall eucalypt forest, is largely intact and is of obvious potential interest for conservation as surrounding lands are increasingly developed (Hitchcock, 2012: 105). The immediately adjoining Wellington Park greatly enhances the conservation potential of the area (Hitchcock, 2012: 105).

The tall eucalypt forests, which form a near intact continuous corridor connecting from Mount Wellington west to the Snowy Range, and hence the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, were assessed as being of considerable natural heritage significance (Hitchcock, 2012: 105).

The native forests of West Wellington are the water catchments for communities of Crabtree, Lucaston and Judbury.

RU043H is an area of forest that has been logged in the past twelve months. The area of forest was a mixed forest of regrowth forest after some fire disturbance and mature old-growth forest (HVEC, 2011: 25).

These forests were targeted by Forestry Tasmania for wood supply to Ta Ann (Independent Schedulers Report Oct 2011). In 2010 a moratorium on logging in the ENGOs’ identified high conservation value forests was due to be in place in December. The so-called ‘moratorium’ failed these forests in West Wellington, like so many others across the state.

CLICK HERE to take action now for the forests of West Wellington and other high conservation value forests across Tasmania.

For more information about the ‘A forest a day’ project, which is a collaboration between Huon Valley Environment Centre, Still Wild Still Threatened, The Last Stand, Markets for Change and Code Green, please click HERE.